The company started protecting itself the second you hit the ground. Somebody called the safety man. The safety man called the office. Before the ambulance was off the lease road, an adjuster already had your name, and an investigator was already on the way to photograph the site the way the company wants it remembered. That machine is fast, and it is paid to be fast.
You are usually the last person in this story to start protecting yourself. And that is not a knock on you. You’re hurt. You’re scared. You’re thinking about your job, your next paycheck, and how you’re going to tell the people at home. Nobody handed you a playbook on the worst day of your life.
So this page is the playbook. It walks you through the first 30 days, one step at a time, in plain words, because that first month decides a lot. Evidence on a well site disappears fast, deadlines start running the day you get hurt, and the choices you make in the next few weeks can either protect your case or hand the other side an argument. Let’s go through it together, slow and clear.
The short and plain version
- The first month after an oilfield injury decides a lot, because the evidence on a well site disappears fast and the deadlines start the day you're hurt.
- Get medical care first, and make sure every symptom is written down. The records are the backbone of your case.
- Report the injury the right way, and in detail. A vague report can be used against you later.
- Write down what you remember now, while it's fresh. Names, equipment, what was said, what went wrong.
- Be careful with recorded statements. You usually don't have to give one right away, and an early statement can box you in.
- Find out fast whether your employer carried workers' comp, because that one fact changes your options.
1. Why the first 30 days matter so much
Here is the part nobody explains to a hurt worker. An oilfield injury case is built out of evidence, and most of that evidence lives on the well site or in the company’s files. On a rig, that evidence does not sit still and wait for you. It moves, it gets fixed, and it goes home.
The equipment that hurt you gets repaired or hauled off and put back into service, sometimes within days, because every day that iron sits idle is money the company isn’t making. The job safety analysis, the daily reports, the texts and the dispatch logs all get filed away where you can’t reach them. And the men who saw it happen scatter.
That last one matters more than people think. The oilfield runs on contract crews, not company hands. By the state’s own research, most of the workers killed in oil and gas are employed by service and drilling contractors, not by the operator whose name is on the lease. Those crews move from job to job, company to company, and state to state. The hand standing next to you when it happened might be on a different lease, for a different outfit, two states away by the time anybody thinks to ask him what he saw.
Federal researchers tracked deaths in oil and gas extraction from 2014 through 2019. About 60 percent of the workers killed were employed by well-servicing companies, and about 18 percent by drilling contractors. Only about 5 percent worked for the operators themselves. The oilfield runs on contract labor, and contract crews rotate off a lease fast. That is a big part of why witnesses, and the people who can back up your story, get hard to find within weeks of an accident.
Source: CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, "Fatalities in Oil and Gas Extraction, United States, 2014 to 2019." cdc.govSo the clock is not a lawyer’s scare tactic. It’s real, and it’s built into the way the work happens. The first 30 days are the window when the evidence still exists, the witnesses are still findable, and your own memory is still sharp. After that, it starts slipping away, piece by piece, and some of it never comes back.
There’s a second clock running too, a legal one. The day you’re hurt, deadlines start counting down. You may have only a short time to report the injury to your employer the right way. There are separate deadlines to file for benefits and to file a lawsuit. We’ll get to all of that below. The point for right now is simple. Doing the right things early protects both your health and your case, and waiting costs you on both.
2. Step one: get medical care, and make sure it’s documented
Get seen by a doctor. Not next week, not “if it still hurts.” This is first for two reasons, and they sit on top of each other. The first reason is your body. Some of the worst oilfield injuries don’t show their full hand on day one. A head that got rung, a back that “just feels tight,” a shoulder you can still kind of use. Those can be serious, and they can get worse if you tough it out.
The second reason is your case. In the law, your medical records are the backbone of everything. They are the proof, written down at the time by a professional, of what was hurt and how bad. If it isn’t in the records, the other side will act like it never happened.
"Documentation" just means the written record of what happened to your body, created at the time by people whose job is to write it down: the EMT, the ER, the doctor, the physical therapist. It's the date, the diagnosis, and every symptom you reported. Later, when an insurance company wants to argue your injury is small or came from something else, this paper trail is what speaks for you. A gap in it, a week where you said nothing hurt, becomes their argument.
So when you get seen, tell the whole truth, and tell all of it. Every place that hurts, not just the worst one. If your back is screaming, you might not mention that your hand is numb or that you’ve got a headache that won’t quit. Mention it anyway. Tell them how it happened, at work, on the job. Don’t downplay it to seem tough, and don’t let anybody talk you into “walking it off.” The version of you that’s hurting in six months needs the version of you in that exam room to have said everything out loud.
A word on whose doctor you see. Sometimes a company points you to its own clinic or a doctor it has a relationship with. In Texas you often have the right to choose your own treating doctor, though the rules can depend on whether your employer carries workers’ comp and uses a certified health care network. The safest move is to get evaluated right away wherever you can, keep every record and bill, and ask a lawyer about your specific situation before you let the company steer all of your care. A provider the company picked may be in a hurry to send you back to work. A complete, honest evaluation is what you actually need.
3. Step two: report the injury the right way
Tell your employer you got hurt, and tell them in a way that leaves a record. This sounds obvious. It is not always simple, and the details matter a lot.
Texas workers’ comp law gives you a deadline to do this. Under Section 409.001 of the Texas Labor Code, if you’re going to claim workers’ comp benefits, you generally have to notify your employer of the injury within 30 days. Miss that window without a good reason and you can lose benefits you were owed. That’s where the “30 days” in the title of this page partly comes from. There’s a second, longer deadline under Section 409.003 to actually file your claim with the state’s Division of Workers’ Compensation, generally within one year. Both clocks start at or near the day you’re hurt.
"Notice" is just telling your employer, officially, that you were hurt on the job. Texas Labor Code Section 409.001 generally gives you 30 days to do it if you want to protect your workers' comp benefits. Telling a buddy doesn't count. Telling a supervisor, a foreman, or HR does. The safest way is in writing, with the date, so nobody can later claim you never said anything.
Here is the part that trips people up. How you report matters as much as that you report. A report that just says “hurt my back” is thin, and thin reports get used against you. Months later, a vague note becomes “well, he never said the rail was broken,” or “he never mentioned the other crew at all.” So be specific and be accurate. What were you doing. What equipment was involved. What failed. Who else was there. Where it hurts.
And put it in writing if you possibly can. A text or an email to a supervisor, an incident form, anything with a date on it. Then keep a copy for yourself, somewhere the company can’t reach. If you report it out loud, follow up in writing afterward so there’s a record that matches. Memories get convenient for the other side later. A dated document doesn’t change its story.
One thing to clear up, because workers ask. Reporting your injury to your employer is your job and your right. Reporting the accident to OSHA is the company’s job, not yours. Federal law requires the employer to report a workplace death to OSHA within 8 hours, and an injury that puts someone in the hospital, or causes an amputation or the loss of an eye, within 24 hours. Whether the company actually did that is its own question, and it can matter later. How an OSHA investigation works, and what it can mean for your case, is covered in the guide on OSHA investigations.
4. Step three: write down what you remember, while you remember it
Your memory is evidence, and right now it’s the best it will ever be. In a few weeks the details start to blur. In a few months, a sharp lawyer on the other side can make an honest man look like he’s making things up, just because he can’t remember whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday, or which hand the foreman was pointing with. Don’t let that happen to you. Write it down now.
Find a notebook or your phone and get it all down while it’s fresh. You don’t need legal words. You need the truth, in order, in your own voice. Write what you were doing right before. Write what went wrong. Write the exact words anybody said, the supervisor, the company man, the other hands. Write down the equipment, the make, the number on the side, what condition it was in. Write who was there and how to reach them, because as we covered, those men move on fast. Note the weather, the hour, how long the crew had been on shift. Little things you think don’t matter sometimes turn out to matter the most.
Lawyers call a note you make right after something happens a "contemporaneous record," which just means written down at the time. It carries weight precisely because you wrote it before anybody coached you and before your memory could fade. A clear note from the week of the injury is far stronger than your best guess a year later in a deposition. Date it, keep it private, and don't post any of it on social media.
Keep this for yourself, and keep it somewhere safe. Don’t hand it to the company, and don’t put any of it online. Social media is the first place an insurance investigator looks, and a single photo or a “feeling better” post gets twisted into proof you weren’t really hurt. The note is for you, and later, for your lawyer.
5. Step four: be careful with recorded statements
Within days of an oilfield injury, the phone usually rings. A friendly voice from an insurance company. They’re sorry you got hurt, they just need to ask a few questions, and is it all right if they record it. It sounds routine. Be careful here, because this is one of the easiest ways to hurt your own case without knowing it.
A "recorded statement" is an interview an insurance adjuster records, where you answer questions about how you were hurt and how you're doing. They will use your own words later. The trouble is that you're giving it early, when you're in pain, maybe on medication, and before anybody has explained your rights or even before you know how bad the injury really is. An adjuster does this for a living. You don't.
Here’s what they don’t lead with. You usually do not have to give a recorded statement to an insurance company right away, especially the other side’s insurer. The adjuster works for the company, not for you, and the recording is taken to find ways to pay you less. A few of the traps: they get you to guess, and a guess that turns out wrong looks like a lie. They get you to say “I’m doing okay,” which is just being polite, and turn it into proof you’re fine. They lock you into a version of events before you’ve had time to remember it straight or see the records, and then any honest correction later looks like a story that changed.
So slow it down. It is completely reasonable to say you’re not ready to give a recorded statement yet and that you’ll follow up. You’re allowed to talk to a lawyer first. A good one will deal with the adjusters for you so you never have to guess on the record. None of this is about hiding anything. It’s about not letting somebody who does this every day take your words while you’re at your worst and use them to shrink what your injury is worth.
If an adjuster is already calling and you're not sure what you have to answer, you don't have to figure that out alone. I'm glad to talk it through with you, free, no pressure and no obligation, and tell you straight what you do and don't have to do.
Call or text (210) 460-05696. Step five: find out if your employer carried workers’ comp
This one fact points your whole case in a direction, and most workers have no idea what the answer is. Did your employer carry workers’ comp, or not? Texas is the only state that lets most private companies opt out of the workers’ comp system completely. A company that opts out is called a “non-subscriber.”
Why does it matter so much in your first 30 days? Because the answer changes what you should be doing right now. If your employer carried workers’ comp, there’s that 30-day notice and the one-year claim deadline to protect your benefits. If your employer opted out and is a non-subscriber, you may be able to sue it directly for the full range of your losses, and the law strips away its favorite ways of blaming you. Same injury, same rig, two completely different sets of rules and deadlines.
You don’t have to guess at the answer. The Texas Department of Insurance keeps coverage records, and a lawyer can check whether your employer was covered on the day you were hurt. It’s one of the first things worth finding out, because everything else flows from it. The full breakdown of these two worlds, what each one gives you and takes away, is in the guide on workers’ comp and non-subscriber claims.
One more reason to find out early. If you get handed papers to sign after an injury, a benefit plan, a settlement, a release, anything, the right move is to have a lawyer read it before you sign. Some of those papers ask you to give up rights you don’t even know you have yet. Signing the wrong thing in week two can cost you more than the injury did.
7. Step six: don’t let the evidence disappear
We started with this, and it’s worth its own step, because it’s where a strong case is so often won or lost in the first month. The equipment, the records, the scene, the witnesses. The sooner somebody acts to lock all of that down, the more of your case survives.
Texas law does put a duty on the other side here. It’s called the duty to preserve evidence, and when a company breaks it, the legal name for what happened is “spoliation.”
"Spoliation" is the legal word for losing or destroying evidence that should have been kept. Under Texas law, once a company knows or reasonably should know that there's a substantial chance of a claim and that something in its hands matters to that claim, it has a duty to preserve that thing. If it lets the evidence get destroyed anyway, a judge can punish the company for it. The punishments run from making the company pay your costs all the way up to telling the jury it can assume the lost evidence would have hurt the company. The catch is that the harshest punishments are hard to get, so this is a backstop, not a guarantee.
Here is the honest way to think about spoliation. It is real, and a company that bulldozes the evidence after it knew a claim was coming can pay a heavy price for it. But the strongest sanction, the one where the judge tells the jury to assume the missing evidence was bad for the company, generally takes proof that the company destroyed it on purpose to hide it. That’s a high bar. So you cannot sit back and count on a spoliation ruling to save a case. What you can do is make sure the duty to preserve gets triggered early, in writing, before the evidence is gone.
That’s the practical heart of this step. A lawyer can send what’s called a preservation or evidence-hold letter, fast, that puts the company and the equipment owner on formal notice to keep the iron, the maintenance records, the safety paperwork, the electronic logs, and anything else that matters. The earlier that letter goes out, the harder it is for anything to “accidentally” disappear in the normal course of business. On your own side, save everything you already have: photos, your written notes, names and numbers, the clothes and boots you were wearing, the names on the equipment. Don’t repair or throw anything out. Hand it to a lawyer, not to the company.
A short, plain summary of how Texas courts handle lost or destroyed evidence. This is legal background, not a prediction about any specific case.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Johnson (Tex. 2003) set the trigger for the duty to preserve. A company's duty to keep evidence arises when it knows or reasonably should know that there's a "substantial chance" a claim will be filed and that the evidence in its hands will be material and relevant to that claim. The court also recognized that throwing things out in the normal course of business, before any notice of a claim, generally is not spoliation. That is exactly why getting a company on notice early matters.
Brookshire Brothers, Ltd. v. Aldridge (Tex. 2014) is the leading modern case. It held that whether spoliation happened is a question for the judge, decided outside the jury's presence, using a two-part test: the company had a duty to reasonably preserve the evidence, and it breached that duty either intentionally or negligently. Remedies range from making the company pay attorney's fees all the way to dismissing its defenses. The court held that the harshest remedy, a jury instruction that the lost evidence would have hurt the company, is generally reserved for cases where the company acted with the specific intent of concealing the evidence, with a narrow exception when the loss leaves the other side with no meaningful way to prove its case.
If you were hurt on an oil and gas site, the most useful thing in the world right now is getting the evidence locked down before it's gone. That's the job, and it's time-sensitive in a real way. Whether your injury happened out in the Eagle Ford or anywhere across South Texas, call or text me at (210) 460-0569 for a free, straight conversation about what to preserve and how to do it. If you want to understand the lay of the land first, the Eagle Ford Shale injury guide is a good place to start.
Call or text (210) 460-05698. What this means for you and your family
Here is the plain version of everything above.
The first month is the one that decides a lot. That's when the evidence still exists, the witnesses can still be found, and your memory is still sharp. The company's side started protecting itself the day you got hurt. This is how you start protecting yours.
Get real medical care, and tell every doctor every symptom, even the small ones. Report the injury to your employer in a way that leaves a dated record, and be specific about what went wrong. Write down what you remember now, while it's fresh, and keep it private. Be careful with recorded statements, because you usually don't have to give one right away. Find out whether your employer carried workers' comp, because that one fact changes your options and your deadlines. And get the evidence locked down before it disappears.
You don't have to do all of this perfectly, and you don't have to do it alone. If you can manage only one thing, talk to a lawyer who handles oilfield cases early. Then the preservation letters go out and the deadlines get handled while there's still time. The choices made in the next few weeks matter, and a little help now protects a lot later.
- Get medical care. Be seen right away. Tell every provider every symptom, and say it happened at work. Keep every record and bill.
- Report it the right way. Tell a supervisor or HR, in writing if you can, within 30 days. Be specific about what failed and who was there. Keep your own copy.
- Write down what you remember. Names, equipment, exact words, conditions, time on shift. Date it. Keep it private. Don't post anything online.
- Be careful with recorded statements. You usually don't have to give one to an insurance company right away. It's fine to talk to a lawyer first.
- Find out about workers' comp. Learn whether your employer was a subscriber or a non-subscriber. It changes everything.
- Save and preserve. Keep your gear, photos, and notes. Don't repair or throw anything out. Get a lawyer to send preservation letters fast.
9. Questions to ask any lawyer you’re considering
You do not have to take anybody’s word, including mine. Test any lawyer you talk to. These questions will tell you fast whether they actually know oilfield work and whether they move quickly, which in the first 30 days is most of the game.
- Ask what I should be doing right now, today, to protect my health and my case.
- Ask how fast they send preservation letters, and what evidence on an oil and gas site they go after first.
- Ask whether my employer was a subscriber or a non-subscriber, and how they'd find out.
- Ask which deadlines apply to me, and which one is closest.
- Ask whether I should give a recorded statement to anyone, and whether they'll handle the adjusters for me.
- Ask about their experience with oilfield cases, whether they work with experienced co-counsel when needed, how the fee works, what expenses they cover up front, and what happens if the case doesn't recover.
A lawyer who knows this work will not get cagey about any of these. If a lawyer gets weird or defensive when you ask plain questions, that tells you something.
Common questions
Do I have to report my injury to my employer? +
If you want to protect your workers' comp benefits, yes. Texas Labor Code Section 409.001 generally requires you to notify your employer within 30 days of a work injury. Even setting benefits aside, reporting it the right way, in writing, with the details, creates a dated record that's hard for the company to argue with later. Telling a coworker doesn't count. Tell a supervisor or HR, and keep a copy.
How long do I have to report it? +
For workers' comp, generally 30 days to notify your employer, under Section 409.001, and generally one year to file your claim with the state's Division of Workers' Compensation, under Section 409.003. A lawsuit has its own separate deadline, usually two years, which is a different clock. Deadlines and exceptions can vary, so if you think one might be close, talk to a lawyer right away. The deadlines are covered in detail in the guide on time limits.
Should I see the company doctor or my own doctor? +
Get seen right away, wherever you can, because the medical record is the backbone of your case. In Texas you often have the right to choose your own treating doctor, though the rules can depend on whether your employer carries workers' comp and uses a certified health care network. Be careful about letting the company steer all of your care to a provider that may be in a hurry to send you back to work. A complete, honest evaluation is what you need, and a lawyer can tell you your options for your specific situation.
Do I have to give the insurance company a recorded statement? +
Usually not right away, especially to the other side's insurer. The adjuster works for the company, and the recording is taken to find reasons to pay you less. It's reasonable to say you're not ready and that you'll follow up, and you're allowed to talk to a lawyer first. A lawyer can handle the adjusters so you're not guessing on the record while you're hurting.
What should I write down? +
Everything you can remember, while it's fresh. What you were doing, what went wrong, the exact words anybody said, the equipment and its condition, who was there and how to reach them, the time and the weather and how long the crew had been on shift. Date it, keep it private, and don't post any of it on social media. A clear note from the week of the injury is far stronger than your best guess a year later.
What if I already gave a statement? +
Don't panic. It's not ideal, but it's usually not the end of your case either. Tell a lawyer exactly what you said as best you remember it, so it can be handled head-on. Honest people misremember small things when they're in pain, and there are ways to explain that. The sooner a lawyer knows what's out there, the better they can deal with it.
What if I was hurt weeks ago and did nothing yet? +
Talk to a lawyer now anyway. Some evidence may already be gone, that's true, but some of it is probably still there, and deadlines may still be open. Every day you wait, more slips away, so the value in moving is real. Don't decide on your own that it's too late. Let someone who handles these cases tell you what you've still got.
Keep reading
Workers' Comp, Non-Subscriber, and Why It Matters for Injured Oilfield Workers
In Texas, your employer can opt out of workers' comp. Whether it did changes everything about your oilfield injury claim. Here is how.
Part 5Eagle Ford Shale Injuries: A County-by-County Look at Where Workers Get Hurt
A county-by-county look at where South Texas oilfield workers get hurt across the Eagle Ford Shale, and what the public data shows.
Part 7What Are Your Oilfield Injury Case Damages Worth?
What "damages" really means in a Texas oilfield injury case: medical bills, lost pay, pain, and more, explained in plain words.